Detective Arnold McGray looked tired.
His salt-and-pepper hair stood on end and his eyes had dark shadows beneath them. A five-o’clock shadow stubbled his jaws, and his dark blue tie had been loosened at his undone collar.
“Let me see if I have this straight,” he said, glancing down at the notepad he’d been writing on since Julia had started talking. “You’re being blackmailed and you have no idea who might be behind this?”
“That’s right.” Julia stiffened, instinctively uncomfortable in the bustling detective area of the local NYPD precinct building.
Around her, overworked and underpaid police officers were hunkered down over desks littered with manila file folders, towering stacks of papers and ringing phones. The cacophony was deafening. A drunken homeless man was singing to himself, a hooker in a bright red dress was trying to proposition her way out of an arrest, and a bearded younger man rattled the handcuffs that kept him locked in his chair.
This was so far out of Julia’s everyday world, she didn’t know where to look.
“And you think this might have something to do with the death of Marie Endicott?” McGray’s voice was pitched just loud enough to carry over the noise.
“What?” Julia shook herself and frowned. “No, I mean, I don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose …” She glanced at Max, sitting beside her.
Even in this setting, his personal stamp of power was easy to read. He didn’t look intimidated or threatened by the surroundings. Clearly, he was a man completely at home and confident of himself wherever he was.
As if picking up on her uncertainty, Max took the thread of her conversation and finished it himself. “Detective McGray,” he said, “the truth is, my fiancée and I have no idea who might be behind this blackmail attempt. My feeling was that we should bring the matter to you, as it could very well be part of what’s happened at my fiancée’s building.”
Julia had to force herself not to jerk in reaction to the word fiancée. He’d used it twice, as if making a point either to her or the detective. Which? she wondered, and then asked herself if it mattered.
She’d already agreed to marry him. And though a part of her was worried about what would happen, another, more cowardly part was grateful for the reprieve Max had offered her. The fact that the child she carried actually was his, was, she thought, ironic.
“I appreciate you bringing the matter to my attention,” McGray said, slumping back in his tattered chair. “Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a connection.”
“Really?” Julia asked.
“Seems unlikely that two such unrelated events would happen in the span of a couple of weeks—in a place that’s seen no trouble at all in more than ten years.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Max said, reaching out to give Julia’s cold hand a squeeze.
“Well, I’ve got all I need for the moment,” the detective said, standing up behind his desk. “I’ll look into this and if I find anything, I’ll be in touch.”
Max stood up, too, and held out one hand. When the older man shook it, Max thanked him. Then almost before she knew what was happening, Julia found herself being steered out of the police precinct and led outside.
“Do you really think the blackmailer has something to do with what happened to Marie Endicott?” Julia asked when they were alone.
He glanced over her head at the teeming streets, then led her down the steps to the sidewalk. Lifting one hand to hail a cab, Max glanced down at her. “My gut says yeah. They’re related.”
“Then that means …”
“We’re not sure what it means,” he cautioned, his green eyes going cold and hard. “But yes, your blackmailer could have been involved in that woman’s death.”
“Oh, God.” Julia hadn’t wanted to think of Marie committing suicide. But the thought of a murderer walking free through 721 Park Avenue was even more disquieting.
A chill swept over her, making her shiver despite the cloying heat and humidity pounding down on the city.
Five
Max stared up at the edifice of 721 Park Avenue, craning his neck to take in the entire fourteen-story brick facade. A prewar structure, 721 was a classic in the old style. The building settled into the corner of Park and Seventieth like an old woman in a comfortable chair.
The city itself had grown and changed over the years, but the old building remained the same, sitting in the heart of the most expensive slice of real estate in the United States. Politicians, celebrities, old money and new, all gravitated to the Upper East Side of New York. And this place was one of the crown jewels of the neighborhood.
All around him, the city pulsed with life and energy. People streamed past him on the sidewalk, and on the streets car horns blasted out a cacophony of sound.
Max ignored it all, though, as his gaze fixed on the roof and his thoughts turned to the woman who’d fallen to her death from that very roof. Then he thought about the blackmail attempt on Julia and asked himself, just what the hell was going on at 721? He agreed with the police detective they’d spoken to the day before. It seemed highly unlikely that two such-out-of-the-normal events could happen within a couple of weeks of each other and not be related somehow.
Lowering his gaze to the glass door that opened into the quietly elegant lobby of the building, Max spied the doorman wandering over to his desk. Smiling to himself, Max stepped up, pulled open the front door and stepped into the cool quiet of the lobby. Vastly different from his own building’s entry, 721 reeked of old-world elegance and a time long past.
Instantly the doorman’s gaze snapped up to meet Max’s. “Good afternoon,” he said. “May I help you?”
Max walked up to the impressive mahogany desk behind which the much smaller man stood. Taking a quick look around the lobby area, Max spotted the mailboxes for the tenants and smiled to himself. Just as he’d thought. The doorman would have had a good view of whoever might have slipped a blackmail letter into Julia’s mail slot.
Rather than answering the man’s question, Max gave him a tight smile and said, “You’re Henry, right?”
The doorman looked surprised. “Yes, sir. Henry Brown.”
“My fiancée lives in this building,” Max said, and realized that it was getting easier to say the word fiancée. “Ms. Prentice.”
There was a flicker of surprise in Henry’s dark brown eyes, which disappeared a moment later. “Are you here to see her, then? She’s not at home at the moment, but I’d be happy to deliver a message for you.”
Trying to get rid of him? Max wondered. “No,” he said, “actually, I came to talk to you.”
“Me?”
Max had made it a point over the years to learn how to read people. It came in handy in negotiations and was invaluable when meeting new clients or prospective business partners. And every instinct Max had told him that Henry was nervous. It didn’t show clearly, of course, and if he hadn’t been looking for the signals, he might have missed them himself.
But Henry’s gaze was furtive, darting around the lobby as if looking for help that wasn’t going to come. His right hand was fisted on his desk and the fingers of his left hand tapped restlessly against a pad of paper with 721 in elegant script across the top.
Interesting, Max thought and smiled inwardly. “Yes, Henry. I want you to think back on the last few days.”
“About